Im old enough to remember when Prof. Ian Fells [1] discussed most of these problems in the early 1980s in the UK. Our “time from problem identification to solution deployed” is absolutely abysmal in the UK.
Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
321–330 of 353 posts
Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
#322The answer is because the UK moved away from their most abundant and cheapest energy source. It's not rocket science.
Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be honest, Bavaria isn't the ideal place for wind power imo, WHEN THERE ARE ALTERNATIVES. Braindead Germany just woke up and decided that they want to do away with nuclear and suck the icy cold teats of Mother Russia. Wind isn't suited for inland Germany, especially in a place like Bavaria, which has the frickking Black Forest ecosystem and a mountainous terrain. Not to mention the winds are much slower there than…
Your comment really is a prime example of what is wrong with this discourse. > which has the frickking Black Forest ecosystem Bavaria has forests, but not the Black Forest. The Black Forest is in Baden Württemberg. > and a mountainous terrain Bavaria is more mountainous than northern Germany for sure, but not all of Bavaria is the alps. > Not to mention the winds are much slower there than in North Germany. For the c…
> Bavaria has forests, but not the Black Forest. The Black Forest is in Baden Württemberg.
Brain fart moment, I guess you're right. But Bavaria still has plentiful forests for the argument to be valid.
> This is just a factually wrong statement. Solar does make sense ans the business case is just getting stronger with the falling panel and storage costs.
The business case is getting stronger because of a self-inflicted wound. You guys have ballooning energy costs in Germany by sole virtue of your own policies, even though you had the panacea to those issues earlier. It's like handling a toothache with clove oil and herbs when you should be getting a root canal, even though you're rich enough to afford that.
I for one would love to see German heavy industry run on solar power. Even the cost justification won't make sense and you know that.
Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your comment really is a prime example of what is wrong with this discourse. > which has the frickking Black Forest ecosystem Bavaria has forests, but not the Black Forest. The Black Forest is in Baden Württemberg. > and a mountainous terrain Bavaria is more mountainous than northern Germany for sure, but not all of Bavaria is the alps. > Not to mention the winds are much slower there than in North Germany. For the c…
This is a weird angle I’ve seen appear in the past few days as I’ve re-engaged with online discourse. Why the heck are people arguing about energy markets in the EU? And that too, specifically, Germany ? Is it targeting green energy? Is it targeting Germany ? What, why ?
Honestly speaking, I don't know for sure but I also spend time thinking about it and figured it mostly comes down to the politics of the issue. Although I can only comment on the German part of the issue, the overall discourse is likely rather similar.
> And that too, specifically, Germany ?
The discourse around the energy market in Germany is mostly centered around the inequality of the German energy market. Germany is a single price zone. However, this price is only the bidding price on the electricity market. In addition to the energy price, there are taxes and network transfer fees (Netzentgelte) that make up the final electricity price that is paid by the consumer. In the northern states the network fees are pretty high because of the high amount of wind turbines being connected to the grid, so the consumers in the northern states pay comparatively expensive prices, especially considering the vast amount of cheap wind energy that is in available in their network regions [0].
In southern states like Bavaria the network fees are less of an issue, resulting in lower energy prices overall (which sometimes makes sense because Bavaria has a lot of solar power installed). The north (eastern) states are also economically relatively weak, so the impression is that these regions essentially subsidize the "cheap" electricity for the economically well off states in southern Germany, hindering the development of new industries in those states.
Beyond those issues there is also the ever increasing cost for redispatch which is placing an increasing burden on electricity consumers [1]
> Is it targeting green energy
In Germany it is certainly targeting the green energy by proxy and the green party in particular. German politics has been a pretty shitshow ever since I turned old enough the care, but the last 3 years were super bad.
> Is it targeting Germany ?
I think Germany in particular is targeted largely because of the decision to phase out nuclear power. This is a decision that is for some reason widely unpopular nowadays, even with people who celebrated the decision 10 years ago. The stuttering transformation in Germany probably also has some side effects in countries that we're (re-) importing from, namely raising the prices due to higher demand.
With the power of hindsight you can argue that exiting coal before nuclear would have been a smarter play, but here we are.
TL;DR: Energy grid transformation is a bit of a (political) shitshow
[0]: German https://www.stromauskunft.de/strompreise/strompreis-atlas/
[1]: German https://www.ews-schoenau.de/blog/artikel/steigende-kosten-du...
Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heat pumps are something like 5-6x as efficient as resistive electric heaters. So no surprise that your bill would be lower. Of course, heating an entire house with (non-heat-pump) electric heat in a cold climate is kind of crazy. Natural gas is way way cheaper. But I've seen it in old houses here in the Upper Midwest, so it's not _too_ out of the ordinary.
Heat pumps are so affordable now, that just feels like a poor decision-making rather than an economic hardship. You could finance a heat pump and the savings would pay itself off in a year.
That completely depends on local electricity costs and climate. We get about 4 months of freezing temperatures and when I did some back of the napkin math, a heat pump installation would be cheaper than gas over its lifetime, but it was only by about 10-20%, at a much higher upfront cost.
I'm not an expert so I could've made a mistake somewhere, but my calculations said that the system would have to survive for 10-15 years before it would pull ahead of a new gas boiler.
Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a weird angle I’ve seen appear in the past few days as I’ve re-engaged with online discourse. Why the heck are people arguing about energy markets in the EU? And that too, specifically, Germany ? Is it targeting green energy? Is it targeting Germany ? What, why ?
Honestly speaking, I don't know for sure but I also spend time thinking about it and figured it mostly comes down to the politics of the issue. Although I can only comment on the German part of the issue, the overall discourse is likely rather similar. > And that too, specifically, Germany ? The discourse around the energy market in Germany is mostly centered around the inequality of the German energy market. Germany…
I saw this on a Reddit discussion on American healthcare. One of the responses about American politics, brought up German decision making, and their denuclearization. Which was new, I’ve seen all sorts of misinfo, talking points, traps etc. etc.
But German energy policy?????
Thanks for the info.
Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know that at some point in tbe last few years, oil and gas companies invested in uranium mines so they could continue their game of "you base your entire civilization on the stuff that only we can dig out of the ground, so pay up." That was the same time these comments started appearing all over the internet. Also, I don't want another Chernobyl next to me house, so those reactors had better be properly made, there…
Believe it or not, but the matter going into solar panels and batteries also has to be dug out of the ground. The difference is that you need a great deal more of that matter to deliver comparable amounts of power compared to fission.
The difference is that with nonrenewable power, you have to keep digging more stuff out of the ground to get more energy, which allows the mine owners to stay in a position of leverage over the world economy. With renewables, you only have to get more material if you want to expand your production capacity. Additionally, there are many ways they can be constructed out of different materials. This terrifies the oil company executives.
Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
#328So many uninformed people in the comments here.
"The Carbon Price Support (CPS), introduced by the UK Government in April 2013, has led to a substantial reduction in electricity generated from coal, which fell by 93% from a monthly average of 13.1 TWh in 2013 to only 0.97 TWh in 2019 (Ofgem, 2019a)."
They actually correctly priced the externalities and managed to decimate coal usage in the UK in a single decade. This increased prices accordingly.
This should be applauded, they correctly designed a scheme so that the economics aligned and coal was quickly removed. We can now focus on increasing energy production from other means and decreasing prices.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/sustainable/sites/bartlett/fi...
Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
#329An important reason that power is expensive in the UK is that it doesn't use zonal pricing and is effectively not giving the right price signals to consumers of power to move closer to where the cheap power is (e.g. data centers) or to conserve power when power is expensive; or producers of power to invest in power generation closer to where the power is scarce and expensive. Another point to make is that the nationa…
We had similar problems with the Nixon/Ford/Carter price and allocation controls on gasoline. There were shortages and long lines in some states and gluts in others. Carter was baffled about what to do. Reagan ended it on day one with an Executive Order to repeal the controls. The lines disappeared overnight and never returned.
> Nixon/Ford/Carter price and allocation controls on gasoline...long lines in some states and gluts in others.
> Reagan ended it on day one with an Executive Order to repeal the controls. The lines disappeared overnight and never returned.
We had lines in 73 following OPEC's response to western involvement in Yom Kippur war. We had lines again in 79 when Iran's oil dropped out of the market. I can't recall gas lines (or reports thereof) during the intervening time. Searching didn't turn anything up.
(Anecdotally, I hung out with the Jan-Feb 1979 tractorcade. They came in from all over. Fuel prices were a concern but not availability.)
The latter spurred conservation. 1979's sharp oil price increases peaked in July 1980. Oil prices then began a long and steady fall, until the precipitous fall in Dec 1985.
Gas prices increase sharply in 1979, again in 1980 and again in 1981. In 1982 they drop to the highs that were set in 1980 and stay there, untethered to continually dropping oil prices. Until 1986, anyway.
Re: Why are UK electricity bills so expensive?
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you in the north of the N/S smart meter divide? I wonder if that has a lot do with experiences.
Why does the UK have such trouble with smart meters? Everyone here, Norway, has one because they are required by the government. I haven't heard of any significant troubles and we've had them for years. See https://www.nve.no/norwegian-energy-regulatory-authority/ret...
Quasi-government incompetence, mostly, though caused by government cowardace: they more or less just shouted "smart meters, do it!" at the energy industry and let them try to sort it out amongst themselves, which means they had several false starts of crap impementations (the first generation didn't think to allow them to be transferrable between providers! The issues in the North are basically because they decided to go for a low-power mesh network, which is a plan that has basically never worked), as well as the fact that the government hasn't made it a requirement for homeowners, but has made it a requirement for energy companies, so they basically just beg the current holdouts (who have little reason to want one) to let them install one.